Joy Overcomes Me

So, I did put myself on something of a news hiatus--I even skipped a few episodes of The Daily Show--and it wasn't hard because I have so much else to think about, especially now that I have two jobs (in addition to being a full-time stay-at-home mom. 

When I got back to the news, I found that apparently "Change we can believe in" translates to "Change back to the Clinton years."  Jesus.  Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson--I've seen these people before.  I had no special wish to see them again.  Actually, I like Bill Richardson, but if I wanted the Clinton years again I would have checked the box on my ballot that said, "Fuck this, give me the time machine."  I'm totally sure the Clintons will have no conflicts of interest with Hillary being Secretary of State, because the Clintons are, like, totally not people who would ever let themselves have conflicts of interest, right?  Right.  Also, since Hillary voted for the war in Iraq for whatever reason (because she failed to understand the resolution or because she believed the ridiculous "intelligence") I can see how she would be the best choice for Secretary of State, because obviously she's very knowledgeable and thoughtful about foreign policy.  I can see how she's going to be a key player now in ending  the war she authorized for what I'm totally sure were not self-serving political reasons.  I'm equally sure Rahm Emanuel will suddenly become a beacon of post-partisanship.  Right.  This should be great.

It's weird that since Bush has been such a disaster, people now look back on the Clinton years with these starry eyes, like it was all ponies and rainbows.  I can't be the only one in the country with functional long-term memory. 

Oh, Camelot!  Return us to the glorious days! 

Anyway, fuck all that!  I don't care, because Christmas is coming!  Anyone who knows me well at all knows that I am an absolute sucker for the holidays.  The giddiness starts at Halloween, continues through El Dia de los Muertos, then Thanksgiving, and then through all the 25 days of Christmas, on up to New Year which we celebrate in Japanese style.  Hot damn, I love the holidays!

On December 1, we got out my son's advent calendar, made for him by his great-grandmother.  Now every morning, he wakes at the crack of dawn like a kid on a sugar-high, "Mama, it's time to do #3!"  The same day, since we had hauled the box of Christmas crap up from the basement, we also hung the stockings (we all have needlepoint ones.  My grandma, who made the aforementioned advent calendar--hey, is advent supposed to be capitalized?--makes needlepoint stockings for everyone in the family with our names on them.  The only one she didn't make is my husband's, and she would have, but I made it for him because I wanted to).  We also got out a very few other decorations, and now he jumps and skips around the house all day pointing them out to me and reminding me that Santa Claus is coming soon and is absolutely going to bring him a new B-52 (the current B-52 has trouble with its landing gear; it's not remote controlled, just an old-fashioned metal toy, but still, a plane needs landing gear).  That reminds me...I need to see if I can find a new one. 

Tomorrow, we decorate the outside of the house.  I'm making my husband take the screen door off so that we can hang the wreath.  It's actually shaped like a candy cane, so I don't know if it's still technically a wreath, but whatever.

On Sunday, we get to what may well be my very favorite thing about Christmas preparation:  cutting the tree.  We get permits from the Forest Service for $10 and go for a hike, making sure to bring along a lot of homemade hot chocolate.  We bicker about which tree in the national forest has the best shape, even though we know that this year, as every year, we will get the thing home and find that it has some Charlie Brown-caliber flaw.  It doesn't matter at all.  It's about the process and the being together and the hiking, anyway.  My stepdad used to cut them down with this old-fashioned wooden handsaw, but that led to many takings of Christ's name in vain, which, even though we're quite secular, seemed somehow wrong (yet amusing).  Now, he's got some kind of metal handsaw that doesn't fall apart after every stroke, and also he has my husband to help with the cutting and dragging.  Then we get the tree home, wrestle it into its stand, and decorate it. 

Our ornament collection is--every year, it brings me to tears.  I have ornaments I made when I was about my son's age (my mom has even more of them, and some of them are hideous, but it doesn't matter).  We have ornaments we bought in Japan, China, Vietnam, Yellowstone Park, and other equally exotic places.  We now have ornaments our son made.  Every single ornament in the box (and some of them were never intended to be Christmas tree ornaments.  Several of the ones we have from Japan are actually meant to be cell phone straps, but I've repurposed them since I don't have a cell phone.  My son likes the one from Nikko with the sleeping cat.) is a memory, a reminder of something or someone.  It's a process I really love, going through them all.

And there's the tinsel, which itself has become something of a gag.  We use this resusable tinsel, see.  We started using that back when my parents got llamas, because the llamas love to eat the Christmas tree after Christmas but, obviously, that shiny disposable tinsel would be a little hard on their digestive systems.  So, my parents switched, and now we all love the old-fashioned look of it, the fact that you don't find yourself still somehow sweeping up tinsel in mid-March, and that it doesn't just become garbage.  However, these are made of aluminum, I think, and my son loves to play with them, which means they all get bent and misshapen.  We have a picture of him from his very first Christmas where he's standing there going through one of my mom's kitchen cabinets with a sadly misshapen aluminum icicle hanging out of his mouth.  Classic.

And I also love the Christmas baking and candy-making.  Tomorrow, my mom and I are making the list of everything we must make--because people have come to count on her chocolate caramels and my peppermint marshmallows--everything from our usual list that we want to make and what new recipes we want to try.  Then we'll make a desultory attempt at figuring out how many people we're giving the goodies to (my list is much shorter than my mom's), although it usually doesn't matter much because we just make what we want to make and give any excess to the Forest Service and women's shelters.  There are always people who could use a good cookie.  We will bake together, like we have almost every year since I've been able to hold a spatula, probably while listening to Christmas albums by Johnny Mathis and Elvis Presley (and I may force my mom to listen to James Brown's Funky Christmas again, because, really, "Santa Claus go Straight to the Ghetto" is fucking awesome).  We'll also sing with my son, way out of key.  At the end of it, massive amounts of sugar will be dispatched around the world.

I love giving gifts, too.  My son is going to pick out our Toys for Tots contribution this year, and he has also agreed to sacrifice one or two toys he doesn't play with (but still in excellent condition) to women's shelters.  I love thinking about what each person might want and running into the perfect gift totally by accident.  My son and I will also make a lot of gifts--we pick one new ornament a year to make and send to most of my family, and this year we're making pine cones dipped in wax sprinkled with glitter to look like snow-crusted pine cones. 

It's all too much.  At this time of year, I get totally overwhelmed by the spirit of generosity and good cheer.  It isn't as completely out of character as I like to pretend it is, I guess, but I need a facade, you know.  This time of year, though, the facade cannot hold up to the tidings of comfort and joy.  Really.  I can't help it, and I can't really understand how people could not get swept up in it--not necessarily Christmas, but Hanukkah or whatever other winter celebration.  Ah, well.  Perhaps if they ever tasted my peppermint marshmallows, they would feel differently. 

*sigh*  It's all going to be so great!